Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Design Notes

One of the challenges faced when writing Warriors of the Red Planet was making it, seamlessly I hope, serve a few different purposes as an RPG.

First, it needed to be a fun pickup game. Obviously, most people running vintage fantasy RPGs are running them firmly (some less firmly than others) in the Sword & Sorcery realm. I want WotRP to be something that anyone familiar with the fundamental rules structure of D&D's earliest editions and variants can just grab off their shelf, roll on the Random Adventure Generation table, and run a "one-off" session when ever the mood strikes the group.

Second, it needed to be a sourcebook compatible with what people are already using. Some Refs aren't interested in running a Sword & Planet game at all, but love to drop the odd Banth, radium pistol, or airship into their current game at a whim. I want WotRP to be the book that's constantly sitting under your 1E DMG, Swords & Wizardry rulebook, or Moldvay Basic book, waiting to be pulled out and flipped through when a little extra "something" is needed for the regular weekly Greyhawk game.

Third, it needed to facilitate long-term play for those who do want to run full-scale, balls-to-the-wall, Sword & Planet or Dying Earth style campaigns. I want WotRP to be a book that's meaty enough to constantly be sitting on top of your 1E DMG, etc, with those other books being pulled out and flipped through when a little extra "something" is needed for the regular weekly Techno-Sorcerers of Barsoom game.

To fill all three of those design goals, WotRP needed to be both "Basic" and "Advanced" at the same time! How the f#@! are you supposed to do that? The secret, it turns out, was hiding in the character classes of WotRP themselves...

This along with The Drune's Humanspace Empires project and the new edition of Carcosa are the OSR products that I am MOST looking forward to. One can only play pseudo-Medieval, Tolkien pastiches for so long until role-playing gets really boring.